


Will You Talk

by LittleSweetCheeks



Category: Madam Secretary
Genre: Angst, F/M, Ghost Detainee, Phone Call, Poor Buttercup, Support
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:07:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27376951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleSweetCheeks/pseuds/LittleSweetCheeks
Summary: Sometimes he had to just talk, just fill the silence for minutes or even hours until she worked through whatever it was she needed to work out.
Relationships: Elizabeth McCord/Henry McCord
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Will You Talk

_Will you talk to me?_

Blake stared at the glow of his phone screen in the darkness. It was all of four thirty-one on Sunday morning; he suspected she’d waited until she knew his alarm had gone off to send the message.

Those five little words were a specific kind of request. It worried him that she was asking it now, not because of the hour, insomnia was a given in their world, but because he knew exactly where she was.

‘ _Will you talk to me_ ’ was not the same as _‘I need to talk to you_ ’ or ‘ _Can we talk_ ’ or any of the other hundred different messages he received regularly from her. No. ‘ _Will you talk to me_ ’ literally was a request for him to talk, sometimes for hours, about whatever mundane thing came to his mind. Most of the time it was single-sided conversation, filling dead air when she simply needed connection to another human being. Needed to hear a voice.

Except, she was away. On the farm. Just she and her husband and she never asked him to talk when she was with Henry. Ever.

He pushed his way out of bed, clutching his phone in his hand as he shuffled toward the kitchen. If he were headed into a minefield, he’d need to be clearheaded.

Once a steaming mug of coffee was in his hand, he pressed speed dial one and waited.

“Good morning, Blake.” He listened to what she didn’t say. To the tone she used, like she’d not slept and had even been crying at some point.

“Good morning.” He matched her volume and cadence. These calls were part of his _‘other’_ job, the one that wasn’t part of any government organization. He played different roles depending on the hour, sometimes brother, other times son, still others her friend. Always a confidant, protector, supporter.

“You weren’t asleep, were you?” Her voice was soft, he had to almost lean into his phone to hear her.

“No, my alarm had gone off.”

There was a catch in her throat, and he wanted to ask what was wrong, what had happened since Friday afternoon, but this wasn’t the time for that. She’d speak up when she was ready. When she had wrapped her mind around whatever she needed to work through. “Would you…” The line went silent and he waited. There was no rushing this. Sometimes something distracted her, and she’d hang up with little more than a hushed apology and he wouldn’t hear again from her, sometimes for hours. If he were physically with her, she’d duck her face into her shoulder and excuse herself, slipping away and while he’d worry, he knew to never follow.

She had to come to him. Like handling a particularly skittish colt, it was one step and stop, waiting with something it wanted tucked in his pocket until it came to him.

“Will you talk to me?” He could make out the tears in her voice.

“Of course.” His answer was a given. He’d taken these calls from all kinds of odd places in his tenure, from trains, to visiting his parents, even once with a date sitting in his living room. Though she’d never known that, and he would forever lie about the sacrifices he made if ever asked. “I went to the Blue Lounge Friday night. I think I told you over lunch that Michael was away, and they needed a sub on piano.” A smile loosened his voice. “We played clear to close and I even took one entire set on my own. I had ladies, and a few men, buying me drinks all night.” He paused only long enough to listen to her breathing. “They keep asking me to go play at the drag bar they perform at on occasion, but I’m not sure I want to revisit that part of my twenties. It was fun when I was in college, but it probably wouldn’t look particularly good if it came out now.” A smile tugged his lips as he remembered the utter delight the day she discovered he used to perform in drag bars, not actually _in_ drag, which seemed to disappoint her, but he accompanied the Queens and was still friends with quite a few. He rambled on a bit longer about the music they’d played and his evening out before quickly realizing that he wasn’t going to have enough material to keep on this train of thought much longer. “Bobbie refused to let me sleep in yesterday morning. He sat on my pillow meowling until I got up.” Given the hours he worked, he had no idea how his cat had decided on what a normal schedule was supposed to look like.

He listened through the line, worry compounding. “Is Henry still asleep?” What he wanted to ask was if Henry was still there, but he assumed if he’d left, Frank or Matt would’ve texted.

There was a tiny gasp. “Yeah.”

The tiny gasp told him so much, so he backed away from that topic and changed course. “How are the horses?”

She sniffled and he frowned. “Buttercup is limping. We’re waiting on MRI results.”

He was batting zero and felt more useless than normal. “It’s cold and I know that farmhouse gets chilly at night… Why don’t you go back to sleep?” _To Henry_ , he wanted to say.

There was more silence and then her whispered voice. “He yelled at me.”

Of all the things in the world he ever expected her to say, that wasn’t even on the long list. But she was talking now and that meant it was his job not to.

“He said he can’t talk to me.” Her voice was a whisper, but he could hear every fear, every pain. “I remind him of failure.” Her voice cut off again and he could imagine the way her face would twist; her shoulders would pull up as she tried to curl in on herself.

The line extended in silence that he couldn’t break through. It wasn’t his place. He wasn’t Blake, the dutiful assistant, right now; no, right now he was the void she could scream into without falling in and losing herself completely. He absorbed it all; sound pulled in, taken in, never returned.

“I’m scared this job is destroying us… Has destroyed us and we’ll never get it back.” He heard her swallow and then draw in a breath that was just an edge closer to sharp. “He is my everything… I can’t lose him.”

He looked at the clock on the stove. Nearly five thirty. This slow, stilted conversation had carried on nearly an hour. “You won’t.”

“Promise?” It was the question, the voice, of a child.

“I promise.” He returned it smoothly, soothing that scared inner child. “Why don’t you get some more sleep? You still have the day and you’re late in tomorrow. I’ll order lunch in, somewhere that will make Nadine frown.” He allowed a smile to play along his lips and the hint of inside amusement they often shared between them about it. “You and Henry will be okay.”

“Okay.” She was still at a whisper. Then suddenly, she spoke again, panic filling her next words. “But I’ll be able to reach you? If- if I need to?”

“Shh.” It was almost instinctive trying to calm her. “I’ll be here… Okay?”

“Okay.”

It took another few minutes, but he finally got her to hang up. He dropped his phone to the counter and leaned forward, weight resting on the now empty hand. It was draining, absorbing it all for her, but he never turned her away.

Once he could stand straight again, he called another speed dial, Matt, the head of her detail. “Good morning.”

“Blake. I’m just headed back to the house.”

“So, you don’t know what, if anything happened overnight?”

“No. Why?”

“I got a call.” The two of them had a lot of conversations that went like this. Blake never would have imagined on his first day that the coworker he’d talk the most with would one day be Elizabeth’s head bodyguard. He was thankful they had so much in common and got along so well.

“Anything I need to know?”

“It sounded like an issue between the two of them. She hadn’t slept when she’d called, so it could blow over and be nothing once she sleeps and they talk. But… If you feel I need to check in…”

“I’ll call.”

“Thank you.”

Something told him to rush through breakfast and his morning routine and he’s glad for it because he barely made it to mid-morning when Matt’s number appeared on his phone and his stomach dropped. “Hello?”

“Doctor McCord had to return to the White House for urgent business.”

Blake frowned. “That’s the whole day.” Three hours each way and even a short meeting and the day was gone.

“On his way out he told me, the horse has to be put down… Tonight.”

He paused at that. “Buttercup?” Blake knew the horse well, he even ridden him a time or two. There was no doubt that the beast was Elizabeth’s first and truest love. “Do you know anything else?”

“I asked the vet and the trainer; they’re leaving in a moment. They gave it something for pain and it sounds like she’ll be spending the day with it until they come back to put it down this evening.”

As if the day could go any worse. “Okay. I’ll keep my phone nearby in case she reaches out.” He chewed his lip. “If… If something just doesn’t look right, give me a call.”

“Of course.”

Call ended; Blake sank onto his small couch. Bobbie hopped into his lap, meowing loudly for attention. He scratched under his chin and then around his ears, letting silence fill the apartment for a while before he started telling Bobbie what was on his mind. A proper therapist was part of his weekly routine, that was his void to shout into, but Bobbie was a good listener as well.


End file.
